Wednesday, December 29, 2010

I have been looking for the accurate story of Roger Fouts being reunited with one of the chimps he had taught sign language to. I had thought it was 60 minutes and the chimp was Washoe. I actually saw this story on 20/20 in 1995 while visiting my parents....I was frozen in place for an hour after the show with tears running down my cheeks. I am so glad to have found the description.

Here is the entire story. It is so moving I wanted to include all of it here in Roger Fouts own words:

Booee is the one on the left. He is speaking American Sign Language with Bruno.

In early 1995 I got a call from Dean Irwin, a producer of 20/20, the ABC news magazine. While planning a show about the morality of conducting biomedical experiments on chimpanzees, he had learned about Booee and my other former chimpanzee students at LEMS I P, the biomedical lab owned by New York University. He asked me if I would be willing to visit the lab and be reunited with Booee in front of television cameras.

I wanted to say 'No.' I had deliberately avoided LEMSIP since Booee and the others were transferred there in 1982. Seeing them would be agonizing because I knew there wasn't a damn thing I could do to rescue them. As for helping them, I'd tried that already. In 1988 Jane Goodall and I had sent a student of mine, Mark Bodamer, to LEMSIP to start an enrichment and activity program for all 250 chimps. The program was a great success, but unfortunately it was scuttled after Mark left.

Mark never got to see Booee - Booee had been transferred to another lab temporarily - but he did visit Bruno for me. When Mark began signing to him, Bruno answered with two signs of his own: KEY CUT. I wasn't sure if Booee would remember me if we saw each other after more than a decade. But if he did remember, he might well think I was there to free him, something I could not do. It would break my heart and his.

But I also knew that visiting Booee would make for some very good television. We could take millions of people inside a biomedical laboratory, which I'd dreamed of doing since I toured Sema seven years earlier. If there was any chance that this wide exposure might improve conditions or help Booee, then I would do it.

A few months later, I found myself in the back seat of a long black limousine, sitting next to anchorman Hugh Downs as we drove to LEMSIP. A soundman and cameraman, seated across from us, taped our conversation. I couldn't help thinking that the back of the limo was bigger than Booee's cage. Hugh Downs wanted to know ifBooee would remember me. I didn't know.

I couldn't begin to guess what thirteen years alone in a cage would do to someone's mind and personality. But the closer we got to LEMSIP the more I hoped that Booee would not remember me, that he would see me asjust another lab-coated visitor passing through. I didn't want to sign GOODBYE to Booee. I was sure I would break down.

When we got to the lab, we were instructed to put on white gowns and caps. Then Dr James Mahoney escorted Hugh Downs, the cameramen and me to Booee~s windowless barrack. Booee lived in a hot unit', where all the inmates were infected with one virus or another. He was infected with Hepatitis C, a virus that can cause progressive liver disease. Through the door I could see my friend sitting alone in his cage.

He looks the same, but bigger, I thought.

The last time I saw Booee he was a young teenager like Loulis. Now he was twenty-seven.

This is really happening. It's too late to turn back.

I hesitated for another moment, then entered the room in a low crouch. I approached Booee's cage uttering gentle chimpanzee greetings.

A big smile lit up Booee's face. He remembered me, after all.

HI, BOOEE, I signed. YOU REMEMBER?

BOOEE, BOOEE, ME BOOEE, he signed back, overjoyed that someone actually acknowledged him. He kept drawing his finger down the center of his head in his name sign - the one I had given him in 1970, three years after NI H researchers had split his infant brain in two.

YES, YOU BOOEE, YOU BOOEE, I signed back. GIVE ME FOOD, ROGER, he pleaded.

Booee not only remembered that I always carried raisins for him, but he used the nickname he had invented for me twenty-five years earlier. Instead of tugging the ear lobe for ROGER, he flicked his finger off the ear. This was like calling someone Rodg' instead of Roger'. Seeing him sign my old nickname floored me. I had forgotten it, but Booee hadn't. He remembered the good old days better than I did.

I gave Booee some raisins, and the years just melted away, the way they do between old friends. He reached his hand through the bars and groomed my arm. He was happy again. He was the same sweet boy I met on that autumn day decades earlier when Washoe and I first stepped on to the chimpanzee island at Lemmon's Institute. That was before everything, before the stun guns and Dobermanns, before the adult colony and Sequoyah's death, before Yerkes and Sema. I was a young know-it-all professor then, right out of graduate school. I yelled at Booee one day, and he humbled me in front of my very first college students by lifting me off my feet and letting me dangle there. For twenty-five years I'd been telling my students about how Booee embraced me and forgave my anger toward him.

Look at him now, I thought. Thirteen years in a hellhole and he's still forgiving, still guileless. Booee still loved me, in spite of everything that humans had done to him. How many people would be so generous of spirit?

As we signed back and forth and played CHASE and TICKLE through the iron bars, I forgot about the cameras and the millions of people who would be watching this. For one wonderful moment I even forgot where we were. But only for a moment.

I MUST GO NOW, BOOEE, I signed after a while. Booee's grin changed to a grimace, and his body sank. I MUST LEAVE, BOOEE. Booee moved to the back of his cage. GOODBYE, BOOEE.

As we left LEMSIP, I shook hands cordially with the director, Dr Jan Moor-Jankowski, as if we were two colleagues who had just transacted some mundane piece of business. I was overwhelmed by shame. I was ashamed of Booee's hepatitis, ashamed of the professionalism of Moor-Jankowski and myself, ashamed of the respectability that hung over all this suffering.

After our limousine pulled out through the heavily barred security gate, no one spoke for the whole drive back to the hotel.

Monday, December 27, 2010

We are house/horse/dogsitting in southern AZ.The house has lots of reading material, which is always a plus.I have been reading a National Georgraphic from March 2010 that I found on an end table here.

The cover story is Wolf Wars.The problem with wolves is that the silly creatures like to eat and survive.Can you imagine?They kill cattle.This makes for some very unhappy ranchers.The ranchers want the wolves outta there.

We have been around lots of people who are over-the-top dog lovers everywhere we park our home on wheels.Most of the same folks who feel their dogs are family, will consume animal products that are the demise of many other, just as wonderful, canines.

If this were the rancher’s beloved dogs who were somehow in an area or situation where no human was feeding them, the dogs would kill cattle, too.And in that scenario the ranchers would be sympathetic.It is THEIR dogs.The wolves belong to nobody.They are not evil when they kill for food.They are hungry.They are no more evil than I am when I eat a a bowl of soup because I am hungry.

The other group that is flipping out about the reintroduction of the wolf, and any protective measures for them, are the elk and deer hunters.

Because of what is considered the “overpopulation” of the wolves, some states are allowing wolves to be hunted up to a certain quota.Idaho permitted the legal hunting of 220 wolves in the 2009/2010 season. This is a photo of hunters protesting against the federal protection of wolves.In the photo one angry man holds a sign that says “Does Anyone Care About Our Deer and Elk Herds?”.I find the sign a bit ironic coming from the group (hunters) that are the most vocal about the elk and deer population growing out of control if they are not killed by hunters...on one hand. And, on the other hand, they are saying that the wolves will kill too many.

One of the most popular bumper stickers that the anti-wolf groups have on their vehicles is SMOKE A PACK A DAY.

There are lots of illogical and ironic parts to this situation.If a rancher can prove that a wolf killed a calf on his land or while out grazing on public land, he is compensated.The compensation ranges from $500 to $1000.

When we were in New Mexico last month, billboards showed the horrible death of livestock killed by wolves.What the billboards didn’t show is that those killed by wolves were spared the prolonged fear, pain and suffering that awaits those who make it to the next steps of the meat industry.Separation from family and companions, trucking, stockyards, livestock auctions and slaughterhouses are a fate worse than being taken by a pack of wolves.When interviewed about the horrible deaths of livestock, it comes down to dollars.The ranchers want to make money on the cattle and they don’t want to lose any of their cash cows to wolves.

A part of the story that is rarely told is that only a small percentage of the deaths really are caused by wolves.Research into the loss of sheep show that wolves account for a very small percentage of the loss.

In Wyoming, Montana and Idaho only 1% of sheep loss is from wolf predation.As a comparison, 22% is caused by sever weather and 25% is from coyote attacks.

So, back to this love of one canine and hate of another.I cannot find how it makes any sense.It is right in the same category as the people who LOVE their dogs but will purchase fur, animal tested products (often tested on dogs….but not THEIR dogs), and foods that come from suffering animals.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue 1911 Photo

I watched a young fashionable woman walk through the airport last week.She was wearing a full length fox fur coat and carrying a large handbag made out of snake skin.In her other arm was her dog.I assume that she could not see the irony in wearing the skin of a group of canine’s she does not care about while carrying the one who is her “baby”.

There was a time when I would not have noticed these kinds of inconsistencies in myself or others.There are still many in myself that I am sure I am blind to.I would hope that those around me would point them out to me. When they do, I would hope that I would not get defensive.

But, we shy away from being that honest with the people in our lives….whether it is someone we have known for life or someone we cross paths with briefly.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

One week ago in the Denver airport I was in a bathroom stall, the marble floors were overly polished and when I looked down I realized I could see the stalls to my right and left as if the floor was a mirror. The woman to my right was one of those wild tissue users who pulls off enough paper to clean up an oil spill. The woman on the left was a conservative paper user. While noticing this, I realized that the piped in Christmas music was playing “Do you see what I see…..”

I became the crazy person laughing in her stall, while, I am sure Ms. Big Tissue and Ms. Tiny Tissue watched me on the mirrored floor to make sure I wasn’t as crazy as I sounded.

Years ago I was traveling through Paris by bicycle. I had left Minneapolis to travel in Europe for as long as my money held out. I got a one-way ticket to Athens Greece and took off from there for what turned out to be many months. I kept my apartment in Minneapolis and my Australian friend Helena was staying there before heading back to Australia.

She figured I was in Greece. This is before the internet and she had no way to find out where I was.

I was biking through Paris and saw a woman with a backpack and a scarf exactly like Helena’s. It had to be her. This woman was looking at a menu outside a restaurant. I whispered in her ear “you can’t afford this place.” She whipped around and we hugged. Before heading back to Australia, she had decided to go to Paris and the UK. In her pocket was a ticket for the ferry between France and England for the next morning. In my pocket was a ticket for the same ferry.

JC and I watched the film FUEL and it only makes me more aware of how I take part in the crazy consumption of non-renewables. I am right now, at this moment, sitting in a big chunk of aluminum flying from Tucson to Boulder after taking a shuttle from Patagonia to Tucson. Why? Because I want to see my friends there and I found a great deal on the flight. 200 years ago I would have written long letters to my friends and they would have gotten them a month later and then responded and I would most likely have most of my dearest friends and family within walking distance. I would not have expected to see my friends on a regular basis who live hundreds of miles away.

I know that my choice to be vegan saves a boatload of oil. Animal agriculture uses more petroleum than all forms of transportation combined in the world. Also, I am not a shopper and rarely buy anything new. My idea of a gift for our home is the beautiful rocks and sticks and bones I find while hiking. So, I may not be the world’s biggest petroleum consumer…..but I am still aware of how spoiled I am…and I could sure make my footprint smaller.

We have a home on wheels. We get to park it wherever we please. I would guess that we don’t drive even a fraction of the miles that most commuters do, but the fact that we can even have this mobile lifestyle depends on fuel.

And, it’s not just that part of our lifestyle that contributes to the USA’s over the top consumption….

Our wonderful daily green smoothie drink has ginger and cinnamon from who knows where and bananas from Mexico. It is only by chance that the kale, lemons, oranges, carrots, and apples in it are from the local organic farms in the area where we are parked right now. There are places we have lived where the sources for our smoothie ingredients make it a virtual United Nations in a blender.

I have to admit it….I am just another fossil fuel dependent human.

I would like to simplify life down to the point where I am not so dependent on fossil fuels. But, as I look around at my life, it seems almost impossible. First I would have to shed the things that are wants rather than needs….that means most of what I have and do. Could I really do without my sun-dried organic Bolivian olives? Probably. Or I guess we could move to Bolivia so then I would be eating locally. The olives would be the easiest to let go of (I know this is hard to believe for those of you who have seen me go through a pint of them in less than 5 minutes) ….Choices choices.It's all easier when I remember that those really simple pleasures are what bring me the most contentment....

Friday, December 3, 2010

I came home from the library where I wrote the Bovines and Bees blog today and found that there were about 75 more cattle who were rounded up today. It has gone from bad to worse.

This is a group that is mostly moms and kids. They are separated in pens where they can see each other, but can’t get to each other.

Now, what was bellowing has turned into the cow equivalent of screaming and moaning. The mom’s are freaking out and their screams fill the air and our home. Some of them are howling like coyotes. The babies are panicked and we can hear their cries in response to the mothers. It is unbearable.

The neighbor at the bottom of the hill told me that the first year she lived here she cried through the whole round-up season. Now, she tries to just tune it out. I am just trying to breath. I cannot get my breath past my chest into my belly.

Bean, our dog, is upset by the sound of the mother’s screams and can’t relax. She is staring toward the herd with big nervous eyes. It may not be her canine language, but she understands panic and fear.

I want to just be like Byron Katie who can “love what is”. I went to BK’s 10 day school three times and I still cannot “love what is” in all situations. I feel edgy and nauseous. The sound of the moms is the same sound that, years ago, made me go next door to my landlord’s dairy farm and find the male calves being loaded on a semi. The mom’s were pressed against the barbed wire screaming just like these moms are. Some had blood coming down their chest fur and all of them had their mouths wide open bellowing for their babies. It was that witnessing that made me give up dairy. As I listen to the moms tonight, the visuals of the dairy farm mothers from years ago is like a painful movie running in my mind…

The same people, who LOVE their dogs and would be completely heartbroken if their canine “children” were taken from them, cannot understand that this is a bond between an actual mother and her birth child. These same people will often have no problem sitting down to a hamburger. It is this disconnect that perpetuates this kind of needless abuse and violence.

There is no difference between the mother/child bonds in these cattle than there is between a human mother and her child. The same pain is felt when chimpanzees are taken from their mothers for research or zoos or the exotic pet trade. Elephants feel the same pain when their babies are taken for circuses, zoos or for work in the lumber industry. The pain of that broken bond is the same in all beings.

Tomorrow some of the cattle will be taken out in trailers. Some will be returned to their grazing land.

I saw a story in the news about a trailer hauling 160 cows in Washington State. The driver changed lanes and crashed into another vehicle and the trailer was smashed and on its side. It was a two level trailer. Only 90 of the 160 cows survived. Those who survived had to be taken from the scene in volunteer trailers after saws cut the trailer apart to get to them. The photos of the survivors are intense. Bodies covered in blood and manure and bulging eyes filled with panic and fear.

I know I am rambling here. I am still, after all these years, shocked by how disconnected we humans are. I just spent the weekend at a family reunion with people who love their dogs with all their heart and would do anything for them…and, these same individuals will eat other beings who are capable of the same bonds, suffering, joy, etc.

I don’t want to be one of those people who only socialize with other vegans. And I completely understand people who make that choice. There is nothing like being with someone who understands the despair of witnessing the abuse we inflict on other species or the joy of doing something to speak up for the voiceless ones. I have this in my partner, JC and in my dearest friends and extended vegan/animal rights community.

It is ironic that I am looking up right now at the side of our stove where we have the bumper sticker: PEACE BEGINS IN THE KITCHEN, GO VEGAN….and at the same time I am listening to the abuse of these cows.

Tonight, we will watch a dvd with the volume turned up high to drown out the mother’s moans, screams and bellowing and the babies’ panicked cries. And when the film is over, I will focus on the community of caring people who are working tirelessly, all over the world everyday to shine some light in the dark corners.

Why do beautiful places often come with extreme animal abuse? We keep parking in incredible spots, and often, part of the package is hunting, animal agriculture or other animal abuse.

Right now we are in the gorgeous desert and mountains of southern Arizona. We are on the edge of the national forest. The national forest and all private land in the area is range for cattle. If you have private land and do not want cattle grazing on it, you have to fence them out. Cattle grazing has changed the landscape here. The plants and soil all showing the abuse of large herds of domestic cattle who are owned by people.

On the land to the east of us is a ranch. It is round-up time. This means that cowboys have gone out on horseback and rounded up the free-roaming cattle and have them in pens so close to us that we can hear their bellowing 24/7. I sat outside the pens today and watched the trapped cattle trying to get back to the cattle they had been grazing with and all of them wanting out of the pens. Because these cattle are being sold off to slaughter or other ranches, they are divided by new owner. This means that mothers and babies are separated..... and friends, those who spent the last 5 months wandering these mountains side by side, are no longer together. Their bellowing is not random bellowing. They have gone from freedom to captivity. They have gone from choosing their food and friends to having no choice.

I watched one mother staring at a youngster three pens away. The youngster was staring back. When the mother called out, the youngster answered. While watching them, I thought about the story I read a few days ago by a writer who is a holocaust survivor. He tells of getting off the train at the camp and being lined up with all the men. His mother was lined up with the women. He watched her line move forward and as he and his mother looked in each others eyes, they had no idea that would be the last time they would see each other.

The pens are slowly being emptied by pick-up trucks coming in empty with empty trailers, loading the cattle and then driving out. I have watched about a dozen leave in the last few days. For those who are full grown and heading to slaughter, the next part of their journey will be the worst. They are heading for a place where the air is filled with panic and the floors are covered in blood.

I heard one of the cowboys screaming at the cattle to get in the trailer. He was calling them lots of names, including “stupid”. We think that cattle or other animals are “stupid” when they do not willingly walk toward a violent situation. The cows and pigs who have escaped from stockyards and slaughterhouses by leaping over 5-6 foot fences and walls were not stupid. No one had to tell them in their own language that they needed to get out of there. The cows who are trying to avoid getting in those trailers are far from stupid. They are no more stupid than any human trying to avoid pain and death.

Our sweet gentle and beautiful neighbors to the west:

I find it amazing that any of these beings are able to eek out a living on this land....where do the cattle find water in a place of no year round lakes or rivers? These two are in a large field, but they have most likely been out on the open range until recently. They slowly suck up the water from the tank with a look of total bliss on their faces. How do they find food on land that seems to barely sustain dry brush?

Even the smallest creatures want to live. It is so dry where we are that the animals have learned to seek out any moisture. Our first morning here, I turned on the outside shower and within a few minutes bees, crickets, ants, birds and other life appeared all around me. The bees will not leave. There is a constant hummmmmmm around our camper as they enjoy the party. I asked the neighbor why the bees are swarmed around one of our screen doors. She asked if we had fruit inside. Sure enough, they are smart enough to know that there is a giant bowl of fruit just inside that door. I am too dumb to have figured out they wanted the fruit. When the occasional bee gets into our home, our dog Bean starts chasing them and trying to eat them. They do not just dumbly sit there and let Bean chow down. They fly for their lives. They hide in the perfect places that she cannot get to. They want to live. Like all of us…..from the tiniest insect to the biggest mammal.

About Me

I live with JC Corcoran, and our beautiful goofy rescue dogs,Bean and Bapu. We live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We are busy veganizing Santa Fe and the world. I live to hike, bike, swim, rescue animals, and love being a voice for those species that human society has not learned to connect to and learn from.
To see more about us and our work, visit www.plantpeacedaily.org.
(Rae is the family blogster)